


Half in the Shadows, Half Burned in Flames

by malaxandrite



Series: Brothers All [6]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, Hardcase Lives (Star Wars), No Beta We Die Like Clones, Post-Episode: s04e07 Darkness on Umbara, Post-Umbara Arc (Star Wars), Waxer Lives (Star Wars), boil and waxer's relationship can be interpreted as romantic or platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malaxandrite/pseuds/malaxandrite
Summary: The last thing Boil wanted to do was leave Waxer's side to go on the scouting mission Commander Cody assigned him too. But he can't regret it, not after what he finds half-buried in the Umbaran mud.
Relationships: Boil & Waxer (Star Wars), CC-2224 | Cody & CT-7567 | Rex, Hardcase & CT-7567 | Rex, Hardcase & Torrent Company
Series: Brothers All [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2114940
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Half in the Shadows, Half Burned in Flames

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! I am allergic to sad endings and character death
> 
> Content Warnings:  
> description of injuries, description of dead bodies, reference to vomit, mental illness
> 
> title from "Beautiful Crime" by Tamer
> 
> Mando'a and Ryl Translations in the end notes

The 212th stay on Umbara just long enough to take the capital. Working themselves to the bone so that they don’t have to see the broken look in Commander Cody and General Kenobi’s eyes anymore. 

Boil has spent the past three nights sitting beside Waxer’s bacta tank, counting time by the steady pulses of his heart rate monitor. The blaster bolt had hit him square in the chest, melting through plastoid, neoprene, skin, and, finally, burning a hole in his lung. The scar sits inches above the tattoo of  _ nerra _ scrawled across his ribs, Boil’s matching one burns like a brand. 

Heavy plastoid footsteps echo in the quiet medbay and Boil knows instantly that it's the Commander, no one else could make walking sound so tired. 

“No.” He says, before Cody has a chance to speak. Boil’s not usually one to disobey his superiors, but he  _ needs _ to be here with Waxer, and Cody knows this. Even the General has been giving him space. 

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.” Little Gods, even Cody’s voice sounds exhausted. 

“You’re going to tell me to go and do something.” Cody lets out a small sigh and sits down next to him. 

“I’m sending a group out scouting near the crash site, I want you in it.” 

“My answer is no.” 

“Boil--” 

He whirls around in the creaky, plastoid chair, fingers digging into the armrests. “How--  _ How _ can you expect me to… to act like everything’s normal when Waxer got shot  _ by his own brothers? _ And I wasn’t there for him. How can you pretend like we weren’t used as pawns in some sick  _ demagolka’s _ game? How can you stand there and ask me to leave him behind when I almost lost him?” Boil’s shaking now, and the words are spat out between his teeth, he feels a sob forming in his throat. Cody takes it, eyes deep and unreadable. Boil turns back to Waxer and lowers his head, shutting his eyes tight so he doesn’t have to see how frail his brother looks. 

“Think of it like this,” Cody begins, voice small and more vulnerable than he’s ever heard it, “the sooner we finish up here, the sooner we can go back to the Negotiator and get off this gods forsaken planet.” Boil doesn’t offer up a response. “The team leaves in thirty.” Cody says, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing. 

Boil opens his eyes and sucks in a breath as the sound of Cody’s bootsteps fade, he’s drawn again to the tattoo.  _ Kriff _ , he thinks, standing up. His knees protest after sitting in the same position for so long and he takes a few cautious steps to straighten them out. Forcing himself to think about how Waxer would want him to do this, wouldn’t want him to waste away sitting at his bedside, he walks to the hangar. The scouting team is mostly all there, it’s almost entirely shinies that had been sent down after the 501st left. Eventually some more seasoned troopers join them: Threepwood, Crys… They gear up, load into a shuttle and head out. 

The first thing Boil thinks as he trudges through the mud toward the crash is  _ damn, those five-oh-first boys sure knew how to do their job _ . Fragments of Umbaran starfighters stick out at odd angles, backlit by the faint glow of the planet. Wooley is ahead of him, with Longshot at his six. He hasn’t seen either of them since they’d had to physically restrain him from stealing a ship and flying down to the surface after they’d learned what happened. He’d screamed himself hoarse while desperately trying to claw his way out of their grasp, his voice is still recovering from it. 

“We should fan out, cover more ground.” Tangle says over the comms. The medic had recently been promoted to sergeant, the previous one having died in the massacre. They all give their assent and move out. 

Boil sticks to the edge of the crash, eyes scanning the area for any Umbaran rebels still looking for a fight. Nothing comes up on his HUD, the only flickers of life the horrendous creatures that call this planet home. 

He turns a corner and finds himself on a small ridge that gives him a clear shot of the center of the crash. The ship is cracked open like an egg, the two halves framing the explosion that caused it to crash. 

The first Umbaran corpse he comes across is almost unrecognizable. Their flight suit is melted into their skin, their face twisted in agony. His stomach roils. Boil keeps walking. More Umbarans peek out of the mud, their grey skin making them look like skeletons. 

He’s nearing the epicenter now and the rubble is thickening. His boots keep getting caught in the mud, like the planet is trying to suck him in. One particularly sticky patch has him pitching forward, just barely managing to catch himself on the shredded wing of a starfighter. The collison shifts the metal, uncovering more debris. Boil rights himself and almost vomits in his bucket. There, sticking halfway out of the mud, is a vod. His blue and white armor stark against the dark. 

Boil’s feet take him closer without his permission. Half his armor is melted onto his blacks and his helmet is shattered so that he can see the blue lines inked onto his skin. Acid builds up in his throat. He keeps moving forward, even though his eyes are turning the blue paint into gold, and his mind is screaming at him to run back to the medbay and make sure Waxer is still safe and whole. His hands reach down to take off what’s left of the trooper’s helmet and his head rolls limp when it's gone. Boil feels himself grow cold at the sight. 

He kneels and begins to wipe the mud off the trooper’s remaining vambrace, searching for his designation. This man deserves to be remembered, not just by the 501st, but by them all. 

The movement is so small that Boil doesn’t notice it at first. Then it happens again. The trooper’s fingers twitch. Without hesitation, Boil is ripping off his gloves and pressing two fingers under the edge of his black and against the man’s pulse. He feels it, faint but steady, against his skin. 

“Tangle! Tangle, come it!” He shouts into his comm. 

“What? What?!” The medic frantically replies.

“I-I found someone. A trooper. They’re still alive.” Boil hears Tangle curse under his breath. 

“I’m headed to your position. What’s his condition?” 

“Bad. He’s… he’s burned,” Boil looks the trooper up and down, then between the crash and where he lays. There’s no way he doesn’t have broken bones or internal damage.

“One of ours?” Tangle asks, voice coming breathier as he runs.

“No, 501st.” 

“Okay… okay, I’ll be there in a minute,” Tangle clicks his comm off and Boil starts digging the vod out of the mud. It’s thick, stuck to him like glue, and the more he removes, the more wounds he finds. 

Then Tangle comes careening around the debris and slides on his knees toward Boil and the wounded trooper. Popping open his med kit he takes a stim and jams it into the trooper’s neck. Next, he starts stripping off the pieces of armor that he can. 

Boil sits, staring at them both, feeling useless. His brain logs back on after a moment. “I’ll comm the medbay. They can send a shuttle out.” Tangle barely acknowledges him, looking up for only a second before nodding and returning to his work. 

The few minutes it takes the evac team to get to them feel like a century. But, eventually, the floodlights of the shuttle fly overhead. They load the wounded trooper up on a stretcher, Tangle following close behind. Boil stands in the mud and watches. 

“Boil, come on!” Tangle calls, holding out a hand. He grabs it and climbs on. 

“He’s 501st?” Pitch, the 212th’s Chief Medical Officer, asks over the noise of the engines. Boil pulls his attention away from the glowing forest below him and finds his voice.

“Yeah.” 

“You know his designation?” 

“No, but the commander might. He’s Torrent.” 

Pitch looks back down at the trooper then and says something into his comm, probably prepping the medics for what’s to come. The flight back to their base is short. Boil hops off first, before the shuttle really lands, to make room for the surgical team to get on. They whisk the trooper into the building. Boil starts after them slowly. Cody’s there waiting for him at the entrance. 

“You found someone?” The commander asks as they enter.

“Yeah, one of Captain Rex’s.” Boil pulls off his helmet and pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead.

“Who was it?” 

“Don’t know, I don’t work with the 501st as often as you. But he had blue lines tattooed on his head.”

“Hardcase,” Cody says mournfully, brow creasing. “Torrent’s heavy gunner.” They stop just outside the medbay, where the burn unit is carefully ridding Hardcase of his melted armor and blacks. A group behind them is filling a tub with bacta. 

The sight reminds Boil too much of Waxer and his stomach churns violently. He leaves the commander standing there, and resumes his vigil. Cody doesn’t follow him.

* * *

Cody waits till the burn unit has Hardcase stabilized and submerged in bacta to comm Rex. He stands, watching the trooper float in the transparisteel tub and thumbs nervously over the “call” button on his comm. It’s good news, Cody knows, but it will also make Rex feel even worse. Eventually, duty gets the better of him and he makes the call. 

Rex’s small holo-figure pops up, he has his helmet off, and somehow through the blurry footage the shadows under his eyes come through clear as day. “Hey, vod’ika,” Cody breathes. “how are you holding up?” 

Rex sighs, and the sound makes something tighten up in Cody’s chest. “I don’t know.” He moves to sit down, the figure glitching out for a moment, when it comes back into focus Rex has his head in his hands. “General Skywalker blames himself for leaving, Tup is inconsolable, Kix is overworking himself, Jesse’s angry at everything… _ We’re falling apart _ , Kote.” The last sentence is whispered, but Cody hears it as if he’d shouted it in his ear. 

“I sent some of my boys out scouting today,” he begins and Rex looks up at him from under his brow, his face shadowed. “And… uh, Boil found someone.” Cody looks away, willing his anguish down, “you should see them.” It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do Rex lurches back from the holo-projector and makes a wounded sound.

“ _ No _ ,” he says sternly, desperately, “don’t give me hope.” 

Cody can’t meet his eyes as he flips the view of the camera, showing Rex the tank's contents. He hears a muffled sob come through the line, and through the fuzzy holo he can see Rex hunched in on himself with his hand pressed to his mouth. They’re both silent for a long time as Cody lets him take in the sight of the heavy gunner he thought dead floating in bacta. 

“How?” Rex finally asks and he flips the camera back around. 

“We think his armor was thick enough to take most of the blast, and the flora and mud broke his fall.” 

“What’s his-- will… wil he…” 

“He’s stable… but he’ll need a lot of therapy and he might not recover fully.” Cody picks up the medical report, “third degree burns on 47% of his body. His left arm is broken in two places, several broken ribs, and his left tibia and fibula are shattered. And that’s just what they could see without doing any internal scans.” Rex has his head in his hands again when Cody looks back up. 

“How am I gonna tell them? Fives… Jesse…” Cody feels his insides twist up in sympathy. Then, “ _ Dogma _ … he-- he blamed them… he…” 

“Do you want me to tell them?” 

“No-- no, I can do it. Just… just let me…” The view shifts, the sounds of Rex getting up and leaving his quarters filtering through. Cody watches in silence as the walls of the Resolute pass by. Eventually, Rex makes it to the barracks, easing the door open quietly. 

“Captain.” Someone says, and most of the troopers snap to attention, though one stays hunched over in his bunk, another sitting behind him comfortingly, Cody can see the red medic’s symbol on his shoulder plate. Rex shifts the holo-projector so he can see the men better. 

“At ease.” Rex says, and they wilt in their boots. “Cody… Commander Cody, one of his boys found… they found someone.” Cody can tell that Rex is trying not to cry. His view shifts again as Rex places the projector on the ground, switching it to enlarge the image. 

Cody hears someone retch, and one of the men keels over. The medic yells a strangled “Jesse!” and rushes over. 

“H-How…” One of them asks, horrified, his voice tinged with anger. Fives then.

“Heavy Gunners have more durable armor than standard troopers,” Cody says, speaking up. “We think that and the plants helped to break his fall.” Fives sits down heavily on a bunk and wipes furiously at his eyes. 

“When can we get him back with us?” Fives asks. And Cody hasn’t even begun to think that far ahead, but he can’t tell them that.

“The medics here want to watch him for a few days, and after we’re done here and head back to Coruscant, he’ll be taken to the Halls of Healing.” Fives nods jerkily. No one else says anything, and silent anguish permeates the room. Cody hears Rex sigh, and he picks up his holo-projector, shrinking the image so his men don’t have to confront Hardcase’s burnt body anymore.

“You’re headed to Coruscant, right?” Cody asks, switching the camera back to himself rather than Hardcase.

Rex hums, nodding, “we’re picking up some supplies on Zeltros now, we’ll be back in hyperspace in a few hours.”

“Okay, we’ll be heading back in a few days, I’ll make sure all your men have permission to see him… if they want.” Rex’s eyes are watery when he looks up.

“Thank you,” he whispers, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears clinging to his lashes.

“Anything, Rex’ika, anything…” Cody’s kih’vod nods shakily, pressing a hand over his mouth. With shaky hands, Rex terminates the call, thrusting Cody back into the sterile white reality of the med-bay. 

“Sir,” someone says from behind him. He turns—it’s Tangle, he recognizes, the medic had been on the scouting mission with Boil, he’d helped get Hardcase back to the base.

“Tangle… what can I do for you?” 

Tangle’s hands fidget in front of him, and he can’t quite meet his eyes. “Well, sir… General Kenobi told me to tell you that you should get some rest. He said that he can handle getting everyone back on the Negotiator.”

Cody manages to pull one of the corners of his lip up into something resembling a smile as he pats Tangle on the shoulder. “Thank the general for his concern, but I don’t think I could sleep if I tried.” Tangle’s mouth opens like he’s going to say something, but snaps his jaw shut as Cody walks past him.

As he exits the med-bay, he spots Boil, hunched over in one of the plastoid chairs next to Waxer’s bacta tank. For a moment, Cody thinks about joining him, but decides against it. What Boil and Waxer have is something that he can’t intrude on. He sighs, closing his eyes for a minute, before leaving, hoping that the labyrinth of the internal corridors of the base will allow him some solace, but Cody knows that’s not what will happen. 

He doesn't linger on his walk through the halls, and upon entering his darkened quarters, collapses on the bunk, his shaking body no longer strong enough to hold him up. He curls in on himself, unthinking of the soot and dirt on his armor, and allows himself to bathe in the hurt and despair and anger that he hasn’t let himself feel. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!  
> According to Wookieepedia heavy gunners have thicker and more durable armor to help support the weight of heavy artillery  
> also I have no idea how comm-units or holo-projectors work so don't come for me 
> 
> Ryl Translations:  
> Nerra - brother
> 
> Mando'a Translations  
> demagolka - someone who commits atrocties, a real-life monster, a war criminal - from the notorious Mandalorian scientist of the Old Republic, Demagol, known for his experiments on children, and a figure of hate and dread in the Mando psyche (from mandoa.org)  
> vod - sibling/brother/sister, also used to mean "brother-in-arms"  
> -'ika - diminutive suffix, often added to names to form a nickname  
> Kote - glory, often considered to be the original form of Cody's name


End file.
